Four-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson says the current doping scandal which caused three IAAF officials to get banned for life is bigger than the one involving corruption in FIFA. He told the BBC “If you think about the victims, it is absolutely worse.”
In an interview with Mishal Husain, Johnson said athletes cheated out of medals by dopers didn’t get a fair shot to win, but admitted he doesn’t think all Russian athletes should be banned, as it would unfairly punish potential clean athletes.
The Olympic record holder for the 400m didn’t sound enthused upon hearing Chairman of UK Athletics Ed Warner’s suggestion that all records should be reset, something of a reboot for the sport.
“It doesn’t make sense to me how a reset of all the world records is going to deal with the issue of people cheating,” Johnson said.
“It doesn’t create a clean competition and that does not deter anyone from cheating.”
He did say, however, that the IAAF needed to be completely restructured.
“It is the governing body – and the very structure of the governing body – that has allowed this type of corruption,” he said.
The scandal is the latest to hit a sport which has been filled with doping scandals for decades. Who can forget the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, when Ben Johnson broke his own world record to win the gold medal in the 100m final, only to be disqualified for a positive doping test.
In 2013, U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay was banned for an entire year and, just last year, the entire US 4×100 relay team had their 2012 Summer Olympic silver medal taken away because of his doping suspension.
The list of famous IAAF athletes caught doping goes on and on, including Steve Mullings, Yohan Blake, Marion Jones and Asafa Powell, etc, etc.
Johnson does have a point: Until the IAAF is completely rehauled, cheating will continue. How many times can they reset the records, and how are we sure anyone is clean today?
[BBC]